


Hidden in Your Head

by ThereButForCabbage



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:14:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24767539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThereButForCabbage/pseuds/ThereButForCabbage
Summary: What if your future depended on a secret you'd never told anyone?
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14
Collections: Focus on Female Characters, HP Diversity, Queer Characters Collection, The Chamber, Trans Stories





	Hidden in Your Head

Darkness. Quiet. Then, something else.

_ Well, isn’t that interesting ... _

She heard the voice, but couldn’t be certain she’d heard it with her ears.

_ Can you hear me? _ she asked, experimentally.

_ Anything that’s in your head is clear as day. _

It was precisely what she’d feared. She felt her fingernails biting into her palms. Felt her knuckles go white.

_ We don’t get many like you. Let me see now, where to place you? _

_ Like … me? _ Her heart raced. Could that be it? Would she be exposed, rejected and sent home?

_ Hard worker, that’s for sure. Not a bad brain. And you certainly know what you want, but what are you willing to do to get it? _

What did that mean? It was all so new, all too much.

_ I don’t understand. Nobody explained this to me properly! I’m the first in my family to come here and— _

_ Yes, yes, and you’re not alone in that. It narrows things down, but only a little. Still got to decide where you belong. You’ll all go through different doors after this. Don’t you want to hear which one? _

Which one will take me? she thought. Any of them? If they knew?

_ You get a say, you know. Whom will you take your meals with every day? Who’ll be around you when you sleep? Good to know who your friends are, eh? _

Through the psychic conversation she could hear something else: the rising chatter of all the others in the room. Nobody else had taken this long. Everyone would know something wasn’t right!

_ Can’t you just get on and make a decision? _ she pleaded.  _ They’re all waiting. _

_ They’ll wait. I’ve been doing this for a very long time, and they always wait. How about that boy who went first? Adell, Thomas. Think you could stand to see his face every day for seven years? _

_ I don’t … I’m not sure I’ve spoken to him yet, but— _

_ All right then, any of the others? Chua, Richard? Hadley, Septimus? _

She breathed in, then out.  _ I thought Alice was nice. Alice Krishnamurthy, that’s her name. We spent a long time talking on the way here. _

_ That doesn’t do me much good, does it? What about Ogden, Wilbur? _

She shook her head—physically, for all it mattered.  _ No, no. I can’t. _

_ Can’t what? He seems a stalwart fellow. A boy needs a friend around here. _

_ But I liked Alice _ , she thought with more conviction.  _ And anyway … _

A pause.

_ And anyway? _

_ And anyway, I don’t belong with any of them. I’m not a boy. I’m not. _

_ Not a boy? What are you then, a fish? _

She had nothing left.  _ I’m a girl! You can put me with the girls or you can send me home, but you can’t put me with the boys. I couldn’t stand it. I’d leave. _

Another pause.

_ You’re a girl? You’re sure? _

_ Yes. I’ve been sure since I was three. _

_ That settles it, then. _

_ You’re choosing where to put me because I’m a girl? _

_ I already knew you were a girl. I had to know whether you were the kind of person who would tell me. _

_ You already knew? _ Anger rose in her.  _ You put me through that just so you could— _

‘GRYFFINDOR!’

Cheers and applause erupted from the table draped with red and gold. The room seemed inexplicably chilly, and then she realized she’d been sweating profusely. She stood in place as if stunned until somebody had the presence of mind to give her a shove toward her house table. She walked on suddenly weak legs toward Krishnamurthy, Alice, who’d been watching the rest of the sorting with keen interest. Alice put out a hand to shake, and shouted over the din with exaggerated formality, ‘Welcome to Gryffindor, Jesse Yeardley!’ Alice’s grin gave away the joke, for she herself had only been sorted into Gryffindor minutes earlier.

She took Alice’s hand, feeling a bit weird about it, and forced herself to look straight into her new friend’s eyes. ‘Actually,’ she said, hoping her voice didn’t tremble, ‘it’s Jessica,’ and then waited for everything to fall apart. Jessica watched Alice, who belonged here in a way she didn’t—who’d said on the train that she was an eleventh generation Hogwarts student on her mother’s side—watched as her eyes lost focus and then came back. Alice jerked her hand backward, which threw Jessica off-balance and toppling forward until she was caught in a surprisingly powerful bear hug.

‘Welcome to Gryffindor, Jessica Yeardley,’ Alice said more quietly. ‘Stick with me. I have plans.’

**Author's Note:**

>  _Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone_ is about a child who endures a decade of abuse and then finds, much to his surprise, that at Hogwarts he is loved and accepted for who and what he is. Hogwarts should offer that to everyone.
> 
> I had an idea for the title of this story, but [Kira Sharp](https://www.fanfiction.net/u/1593106/Kira-Sharp) gave me a better one, brilliantly pulled from the Sorting Hat's song in the first book.
> 
> Yeardley is an old English name and is pronounced YARD-lee. I don't think I'm qualified to expand this into anything longer than it is, but I have a considerable store of background information about the two human characters hidden in MY head.


End file.
